This blog is written by Mike Hamlyn, Faculty Director for Teaching and Learning in the Faculty of Computing Engineering and Technology at Staffordshire University. It's for me to point to items of interest that I find, and for staff and students to share their comments

there has been little change over the years about the reasons for non-continuation of studies

Yorke highlights the following pointers as a result of the study:

poor choice making by students applying to courses - institutions need to be accurate in describing what is on offer

quality of teaching - this can be poor enough to be the reason for leaving, especially for older students. The implication is that a mode of teaching and learning is needed whereby students are quickly engaged in academic work and provided formative feedback at an early stage, so that they can gain an appreciation of expectations. Four things follow form this: allocation of resources has to reflect importance of the first year;teaching approach must be centred on student development; mechanisms are needed to enhance chances of students developing a supportive network of peers and thoseteaching first years must have a strong commitment to teaching and student learning.

social integration - possible issues with local students who do not have the benefit of living in communal halls

resources - for some this was an issue, but most students were happy with the level of resources provided

managing expectations - programme organisation is seen to be key, especially in communicating details of cancelled teaching sessions. Management of student expectations is increasingly important and students need to know what they can expect, what the limitations of provision are and that they will be treated with consideration.

Two possible trends are identified:Although finance remains problematic for students, is maybe becoming less salient in thereaosns for students leaving. Secondly, there is a growing perception that the value for money students receive is dependent on the amount of staff engagement with them. This increasing consumer-like expectation on the part of students is a challenge for institutions on how to deal with "value for money".

Yorke concludes that institutions need to "bend the odds", in favour of student success, by reviewing policies and practice. "Students will not put up with what they perceive to be a poor quality experience when they are committing substantial amounts of money to their education."

The NUS has just published the results of a major survey into the student experience. The report covers everything from choosing a course and university and accommodation and welfare services to student employment and bullying.

In the category of choosing a university and course, 31 per cent of students were motivated to choose their university because it was close to home; however, in the lowest socio-economic groups (D and E), this figure rose to 53 per cent.

For our Faculty, over 50% of undergraduate students in Stoke are from Staffordshire LEA, whereas the figure for the Stafford campus is about 20%.

In regards to coursework and feedback, however, 25 per cent of students had to wait more than five weeks for feedback on their coursework. Only 25 per cent of students received verbal feedback on their assessments. I think we all know our students' view fo feedback, based on results of Viewfinder and NSS!

Monday, November 10, 2008

This is a really useful set of resources, published by Strathclyde University, and funded by the Scottish Funding Council. The website is http://www.reap.ac.uk/index.html.

Some of the reources include: Principles of good formative assessment and feedback.

Help clarify what good performance is (goals, criteria, standards). To what extent do students in your course have opportunities to engage actively with goals, criteria and standards, before, during and after an assessment task?

Encourage ‘time and effort’ on challenging learning tasks. To what extent do your assessment tasks encourage regular study in and out of class and deep rather than surface learning?

Deliver high quality feedback information that helps learners self-correct. What kind of teacher feedback do you provide – in what ways does it help students self-assess and self-correct?

Provide opportunities to act on feedback (to close any gap between current and desired performance) To what extent is feedback attended to and acted upon by students in your course, and if so, in what ways?

Ensure that summative assessment has a positive impact on learning? To what extent are your summative and formative assessments aligned and support the development of valued qualities, skills and understanding.

Encourage interaction and dialogue around learning (peer and teacher-student. What opportunities are there for feedback dialogue (peer and/or tutor-student) around assessment tasks in your course?

Facilitate the development of self-assessment and reflection in learning. To what extent are there formal opportunities for reflection, self-assessment or peer assessment in your course?

Give choice in the topic, method, criteria, weighting or timing of assessments. To what extent do students have choice in the topics, methods, criteria, weighting and/or timing of learning and assessment tasks in your course?

Involve students in decision-making about assessment policy and practice. To what extent are your students in your course kept informed or engaged in consultations regarding assessment decisions?

Support the development of learning communities To what extent do your assessments and feedback processes help support the development of learning communities?

Encourage positive motivational beliefs and self-esteem. To what extent do your assessments and feedback processes activate your students’ motivation to learn and be successful?

Provide information to teachers that can be used to help shape the teaching To what extent do your assessments and feedback processes inform and shape your teaching?

Principles of good assessment design

Assessment design should:

"empower"

Engage students actively in identifying or formulating criteria

Facilitate opportunities for self-assessment and reflection

Deliver feedback that helps students self-correct

Provide opportunities for feedback dialogue (peer and tutor-student)

Encourage positive motivational beliefs and self-esteem

Provide opportunities to apply what is learned in new tasks

Yield information that teachers can use to help shape teaching"engage"

This week DIUS will publish a series of papers which will consider the following: "Traditional university degrees may be radically overhauled, with thousands more students studying part-time, employers funding degrees and universities forced to reveal what benefit they actually give to students."

One of the papers which will argue that the cost of higher education is 'beginning to erode and blur the current distinction between full-time and part-time study', with two-thirds of full-timers doing paid jobs during term, has been written by Christine King.

Other proposals mooted in the article include:

Greater flexibility in the way people study in HE

Universities publishing more detail of student outcomes

Changes to the academic year

Review of the degree classification system.

All in all, a fundamental look at how universities operate - watch this space!

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

An article on the Guardian website, suggests that Barack Obama winning the US election could have an effect on UK universities who recruit overseas students.

Since 9/11 UK Universities have benefited form tighter visa restrictions for those wishing to enter the US. However relaxation of US visa rules, at the same time as a tightening of UK visa regulations, together with the feel good factor of a Democratic win could have a major effect on recruitment of overseas students into the UK.

Saturday, October 18, 2008

There's a long article this week in the Higher by Sally Brown of Leeds Met. I met her briefly at a conference there last year, which was all about retention, but I've been aware of her work for many years.

In this latest article she reflects on her work, and especially on assessment. A typical paragraph is:

"If we want students to behave like effective learners, for example by selecting and using relevant sources rather than just downloading stuff from the web, we need to privilege these behaviours by according them marks. Rewarding slovenly scholarship is daft. If we set predictable tasks, we should not be surprised when students plagiarise."

Ring any bells? Many of the assignments I have dealt with as plagiarism cases were those where the question was essentially "Research and write about something in your non-native language."

Initially the presentation was created as a means of prompting discussion about education for school aged students. But it is equally applicable to much of what we do as well.

Questions that it raises for us are:What do we think it means to prepare students for the 21st century? What skills do students need to survive and thrive in this new era?What implications does this have for our current way of doing things?Do we need to change? If so, how?How do we get from here to there?What challenges must we overcome as we move forward?What supports will we need as we move forward?What kind of training will we need to move forward?

Sunday, October 5, 2008

We all know there's lots of material on the web we can use for teaching - and there's an awful lot that students can copy and paste and submit as assignments!

Much of the material is not always structured in a way to be used for teaching and learning processes. Jas (our e-learning coordinator) has built up a collection of resources that she can share, but I thought the following two might be of interest (for those who have not come across them before).

MIT has, for a number of years, run a project on open courseware. They provide a variety of materials - lecture slides, course outlines etc, and have a number of lectures on iTunes as podcasts. Have a look at MIT.

Another really useful site is from the OU at LearningSpace. Here the "units" are structured like our modules, many have built in formative tasks and all can be used free of charge provided OU is recognised.

If resources like this match what we need, surely there is a case for using these instead of always re-inventing the wheel?

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

The survey of first year student opinions has now closed. Thanks to everyone who responded - we will be using the information gathered to improve our recruitment activity and welcome week for next year.

Monday, September 22, 2008

On 21st September 2008, the Sunday Times published it's annual University Guide. As well as its version of league tables (available here), they also provide a short summary of the institution - click here for more.

Friday, September 19, 2008

This is an extract of the league tables produced by the Guardian - I've shown the top of the table, the middle where we are (which shows an improvement from the previous year) and some of our obvious competitors.

The Guardian table is compiled using metrics for: teaching quality; feedback as assessed by students in the NSS; spending per student; staff-student ratio; job prospects; value added and entry qualifiactions.

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Results of the national Student Survey have now been published - the responses are made by students completing their awards, unlike our own Viewfinder which is for students in earlier levels of awards. The results can be found at Unistats

Monday, September 15, 2008

Another video from the Higher Education Academy looks at student views on plagiarism. We didn't get time last week to cover this subject, but will run a sesion during the year on this very important topic.

One thing that came out of one of our awaydays was the need to engage with parents at open days. This was a very timely comment, as parents can have a huge impact on the choices that their children make. Some of the suggestions were that we should provide separate sessions for parents at open days, which could focus on the issues they are interested in, eg student finance and employability, while prospective students are shown around faciltities.

The Guardian published an article about the influences parents have on young adults, not just students, and describes how some organisations are dealing with this phenomenon.

Hi - thanks to everyone who atended the awaydays last week (one comment I had wa sthat we were not really "away", but at least we all spent some time away from our offices and labs!).

Feedback has ben generally really positive, and you've provided me with plenty of suggestions of other things you would like to see in future development sessions.

This week, as well as being around to welcome new students, I'll be compiling all the reponses you've given regarding Viewfinder. Once I've gone through them, I'll put together an action plan which I'll circulate.

This blog is written by Mike Hamlyn, Faculty Director for Teaching and Learning in the Faculty of Computing Engineering and Technology at Staffordshire University. It's for me to point to items fo interest that I find, and for staff and students to share their comments.